Steve Dosh

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.. started 9 am Central Standard Time ( CT ) Sunday 16.10.09

Made it to Chicago okay on AMTRAK ® . Nice ride on the Capitol Limited . Young crew . Lotsa' people . Met a young lady from Lagos , Nigeria who reminded me of an old g/f ( Imo Bassey ) from college . The young lady knew just about everything about the Bassey family . Small world . Big people . Africa

It was a great trip all-in-all and very productive with Andrew, too . We accomplished a lot on the college, wisdom teeth , and driver's permit fronts . I'm people watching now in my favorite Big City . Everyone here is interesting to look at . Lot's of haolies . Jeans and leather . Not many homeless walking around today in the murder capital of the US . It's too cold and windy any way . They are having a race here to-day , a marathon foot race . The weather is beautiful here in the Windy City . In fact , Boston is windier than Chicago but who cares ? It's 61º F in the shade . The race is about to start . It'll go right by here

The weather wasn't great this trip but we've all escaped hurricane Matthew , haven’t we . i got to see JHH , three of my four kids ( Larry being in HI ) , the Wilkes , made some new friends , took pictures , made some movies , saw snow and some New England Fall colors . What more could one ask for ?

We just went by about 250 acres of cabbage on the train waiting to be picked . Did i tell you that Becky makes sour kraut these days ? http://sweetrootsfarm.weebly.com She does . Andrew's a senior in high school and Rob drives Sherman William's ® paint all over the West Coast for a living . They are all very happy , healthy , and contented . We remembered their mom's passing ten years ago with the Sicards and the Wilkes , young Charlsie and Erin

The new Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station CHI is great , all clean with some seats at " see " ( street ) level with large plate glass windows to look out of . For all it's crime and one murder every day , Chicago seems nice . I could sit here all day and people watch and i will now . i was reading some ' lost ' Jack Kerouac http://www.amtrakthenational.com/lost-fiction-by-jack-kerouac on the train and it made me think of Chad Wilkes and Andrew , two budding novelists with something to say . Read it . It's good 😇

5 pm CST Sunday

Here , way North of Chicago now , it's the heartland , USA . They are harvesting cow ( and pig ) corn silage , and their soybeans before winter . There are big farms and Cheeseheads here in Columbus , Wisconsin , Columbus being the most popular town name in America . There are 12 automobiles waiting for us to move along from the station , patiently , so they can go through the intersection of trains and automobiles . Wisconsinites are large people of Germanic \ European descent . Everything's " For Sale , " just like everywhere else in the US of A . For sale ; lock , stock , and barrel . i am eating pistachio nuts , a Wilkes staple . Next time back East we’ll have to go ‘ glamping ’ together ( glamorous camping ) in MD, “ Where Camping, Cabins & RVing just come naturally ! “ There's a mini-golf course all done up for Halloween we just passed , and , on the side of the adjacent liquor bar , a " Welcome Home , " sign is hung up high . Hmmmm.. Mini-golf & beer . Good combination , i guess . Hate that windmill , though . There are red & blue ribbons tied around trees . Why ? There is also a " Little Lending Library ," by the side of the road , ( like Becky and Chad's in MD ) , with two chairs beckoning people to stop and ' set a spell .' There are flocks of Canadian Geese ( protected ) and Wild Turkeys ( not ) . In fact , my friends just shot some yesterday in Maine and ate them bar-b-cue style . I also saw a tour bus hit one that was taking flight by the side of the road in VT . The bus was coming my way and the feathers flew everywhere . Talk about fresh road kill , huh ? Turkeys are dumb . People , too . My friends do not have hunting licenses . At least they do not hunt deer at night silently with bows and arrows and flashlights as far as i know

i think we just passed Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woe-be-gone . There's a big fat guy burning leaves in his front yard sucking down a beer . i can almost smell the leaves burning from here on the train at 80 MPH . Now we are coming up upon the mighty Mississippi River and the sun is setting . Beautiful . Why do i ride trains ? This is part of the reason why . Portage , La Crosse , Wisconsin Dells and Winona , WI - MN next in line . Bald eagles along the river . Deer at dusk , grazing

The Canadian National ® train line owns the tracks here in Wisconsin and they transport a lot of shale oil from Alberta and grain on them . Trains do wreck occasionally . Pipelines generally do not unless they are very old or sabotaged . We still live in a very carbon intensive global economy . China burns a lot of soft peat - moss type brown coal in their power plants that causes most of our Global C02 climate change from humans . They bring a new power plant on line every week . They could install scrubbers to burn off the residue C02 like we ( US ) do but they don’t . They have no EPA . China’s vast population is choking from pollution . The US went through this back in the 60’s

Monday 5 am North Dakota

We passed through Minnesota during the night . We hit a truck on the train near Devil’s Lake , ND, a little while ago in the dark . The train screeched to a stop , disc brakes steaming , smoking and smelling , stuff strewn everywhere all about from the collision with the trailer . A train hitting a truck is like a truck hitting a mailbox . Why do i ride the rails ? There’s always some thing interesting going on . No body was hurt , thank goodness . It gave me time to take a sponge bath , shave , and have some breakfast with new friends ( really nice people ) from Montana . They will inspect the train at the next stop for damage . The crew on this and the previous train have been friendly and helpful

No damage . i reported the electricity out in the observation car and the conductor fixed it . Two circuit breakers were tripped

The oil boom is bust here in ND . No more fracking . It’s all shut down and closed up . One can still see the wells but they are inactive . The pumps are not pumping . There are huge oil storage tanks half finished . BNSF ® ( the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad ) is the only real business going on here these days . Long trains carrying intermodal freight vans , grain , and other items . 40% of US freight goes by rail . Being this high North one can almost throw a rock and hit Canada . Rugby , ND . We have relatives here , the Muglands

09:30 am Minot , ND . New engineer , new conductors , train’s okay , and full beards are popular up here in ND - MT . I have not too much to say about these places . Wide Open Spaces and barren places . The woman was arguing with my car attendant so i overheard the conversation in passing and immediately gave her my pen from my overalls . “ How did that young man know . . ? ” The car attendant told me several minutes later that he had already solved about eight problems for them ( she and her husband ) and was at his wit’s end with them

14:00 Mountain Time ( MT ) , Monday , Glasgow , Montana ( MT ) . It’s 37º, cloudy and snowing here at 2257.21784776 feet ( or 688 meters ) and climbing . There are no red maple leaves here and barely any trees at all . There’s just brown oak and other yellow leafed trees here and there . The water is high everywhere and the banks of streams are overflowing . It should be good ice skating soon . the clouds are low and scudding by from West to East . We’re about an hour and a half late on the train but are making good time ( 80 mph ) because there is no fracking going on and no active oil tanks on the tracks . The oil tanks are all empty and on sidings . The sky is low and very grey . Winter is truly setting in here now . No fall . One year i was on this train and it snowed on 9.11 . Another time i was on the Coast Starlight and it snowed in the Cascades in June

i think the Blackfeet Indian tribe here have black feet because they have suffered frostbite . I do . There were several Native Americans discussing their heritage now and trying to figure out who someone’s real father was because of a dispute as they are getting off the train in a vain attempt to try and resolve everything now . The same thing happens in Micronesia all the time . That’s why we have laws and deeds and cadastral land surveys and surveyors and courts and legal conventions and written agreements . Word of mouth , handshakes , and oral history just doesn’t cut it at times . We just passed through Hinsdale , MT, “ Home of the Raiders,” and home to the Raiders Quick Stop Bar . It took us about five seconds to get through the town whizzing along at 80 MPH . Malta , MT , next stop . They advertise cowboys , indians , and dinosaurs . We are literally a stone’s throw away from Canada . Just saw a hawk , then two hunters with orange caps walking toward our train ( and their pickup truck ) and then the antelope everyone was stalking in between us and them cowering behind a scrub brush

16:14 MT Havre MT . 2,500 feet , first snowfall . There are many horses and cattle out in the snow . I’d take pictures but the windows are too dirty ! Rt. 15 North - South would be the road to take from Canada to Mexico with an RV out here . Yup . A Day-Glo Dinosaur Museum , the Maltan Motel , a Philips County Transportation Museum that is the size of a three car garage and has two old ones in it , the neon lit Café , more cattle and horses and the hay bales that aren’t getting wet in the flooded fields are rolled up and getting snowed on . Not good . Hay needs to be dry when stacked

The Continental Divide is where water either runs West to the Pacific Ocean or East to the Atlantic Ocean . Went cruised by it in a mountain pass at 5,577 feet . We gain an hour every so often . Time slows down . I’ve gone from Eastern ( ET ) to Central ( CT ) to Rocky Mountain Time ( MT ) and will arrive in Portland tomorrow in Pacific Time ( PT ) . Russia used to span fourteen ( 14 ) time zones

The floor’s clean enough that the little kids are crawling around and playing on it here in the observation car . No passengers . The Mennonites are chatting up a storm in their funny Anglo - Germanic dialect . We are all “ English,” to them . Cellphones seem to work off and on here in Ted Turner’s country . We have been following the same pick up truck and he , us for the past three hours . Gas is $US2.40 here . Just passed 3,000 feet and the snow is flying ! They have received about four or five inches so far . Trains are actually , and for the first time ever , getting out of our way so we can make it to the West Coast on time ( more or less ) . I’ve never seen this happen . We have passed probably four or five BNSF freight trains . They seem empty . We’ll get in 1.5 hours later to Portland , Tuesday . Not bad . 07:15 am sunrise . Beautiful . It’s mornings like this on the train i think of rob, my son , driving out there all alone on the highways . We’ll be there at 11:00 am , i spend the night , then on the plane home Wednesday

The Columbia River is very low , the wind is blowing down stream ( it usually blows up stream ) and the trees are in bloom , flowering . This is al a result of climate change . . some videos to follow

train home blog. 2016. fall .rtfd

This is a picture of my wife with her real mom on the right , Masako on the left . .her aunt who ended up raising her . .and her sister Cinderella ca. 1967 .. great family reunion here in MD this year . .